Ember Flameheart raised his staff and demanded fire. The staff answered, as it always did. Orange flame poured from the dragonblood core and lit his green flame cloak brighter. But the fire died the moment he stopped pulling. Ordinary fire. Dead fire. Ember needed living dragonfire to forge his crown, the crown that would name him ruler of every troll clan in Xenoblight. His staff could not give it. He had known this for a week, and the knowing burned worse than any flame. He was short, even for a troll. His red hair stood up in wild spikes. His yellow eyes fixed on the crystal fortress that rose before him. Green walls climbed high, veined with fire and ice. Yellow-armored guards stood at the gate, spears crossed. Inside those walls, the old tales said, a beast still slept. A beast that breathed living dragonfire in its dreams. "You're really going in there," said a voice behind him. Ember turned. Spindle Fuzzwick crouched at the edge of a bright patch of mushrooms, long spider-arms folded tight. Their pink and blue fur bristled. Ember and Spindle had picked those mushrooms together since they were small. Spindle had followed him across three valleys, complaining the whole way. "I have to," Ember said. "The staff isn't enough. It never was." Spindle uncurled one thin arm and pointed at the guards. "Those spears say no crown is worth it." Ember walked toward the gate anyway. The guards lowered their spears. He lifted his staff and forced every scrap of dead fire into it. The flame roared wide, not to burn but to blind. The guards flinched. Ember slipped between them and shoved through the crystal doors. Inside, heat and cold fought in the air. He ran down a long green hall until the floor sloped into a pit. There it lay. A dragon, vast and old, curled in sleep. With each breath, blue-white fire drifted from its jaws and hung in the air, alive and moving on its own. Living dragonfire. Ember lowered his staff toward the drifting flame. The dragonblood core drank it up. The staff turned cold, then blazed a color he had never seen. The living fire coiled inside the wood and stayed. It did not die. He almost laughed. Then the dragon opened one eye. Ember ran. He tore back up the hall as the beast rose behind him. Its roar cracked the crystal walls. He burst through the doors, grabbed Spindle by a furry arm, and pulled. They fled past the meadow as the fortress shuddered. Ember gripped his staff. The living dragonfire pulsed inside it, warm and awake. He had what the crown demanded at last. But the dragon was awake now too, and it had seen his face.

By dawn Ember and Spindle had put three ridges between themselves and the dragon. Ember dropped to his knees beside a patch of colored mushrooms and held up his staff. The living dragonfire pulsed inside the dragonblood core, blue-white and awake. He had it. But holding it was not shaping it. To forge a crown, he needed a forge, and no fire he could make ran hot enough to bend that flame into metal. "You can't build a fire big enough," Spindle said. Spindle had trailed him across three valleys, and complained through every one. Now they crouched among the mushrooms, spider-arms wrapped tight around their knees. "You already woke a dragon. Let the crown go." "The crown makes me king," Ember said. "I don't stop." He pulled ordinary flame from the staff and poured it over a ring of stones. The fire roared orange. He set a strip of iron in the middle and waited. The metal glowed dull red, then held. It would not soften. Ember's ordinary fire was too weak, and the living fire refused to leave the staff to join it. The two flames would not mix. Spindle pointed one long arm past his shoulder. "Look at that." A plant grew from a crack in the rock. Purple and pink leaves fanned out below small green flowers shaped like folded wings. Between the leaves sat a lizard, green with gold-edged scales, its foreleg braced on a stem. As Ember watched, the lizard breathed on the plant. The green flowers glowed. Heat shimmered off the leaves. The rock beneath them had gone black and smooth, like slag from a furnace. Ember crawled closer. He touched the blackened rock. Still warm. Far warmer than his own fire had made the stones. The plant drank the lizard's breath and threw the heat back tenfold. "That's my forge," he said. "That's a plant," Spindle said. "With a lizard on it." Ember cleared a space around the roots. He laid the iron strip in the heart of the glowing flowers. Then he lowered his staff and let the living dragonfire drip out at last. The blue-white flame slid down onto the metal. The plant's heat caught it and held it. The iron softened, then ran like water. Ember worked fast. He bent the glowing metal with the butt of his staff, folding it into a band, then points. The living fire stayed alive inside the metal, blue veins running through the iron. A crown took shape under his hands, warm and burning and awake. He lifted it. The circle of iron pulsed with dragonfire that would not die. Then the ground shook. A shadow crossed the mushrooms. Ember looked up. High above, wide wings spread against the pale sky, three orange eyes fixed straight down on him. The dragon had found his face again. And now he held the proof of what he had stolen.